1stOncology™: Cancer Intelligence Service – Page 14371 – 1stOncology is recognized as a Top 10 Global Pharma Analytic Provider

CytoReason Signs Collaboration Agreement with Pfizer Inc. To Utilize CytoReason’s Machine Learning Model of the Immune System for Drug Discovery

On January 07, 2019 CytoReason, a leader in machine learning for drug discovery and development, reported that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with Pfizer Inc. that will leverage CytoReason’s cell-centered models of the immune system (Press release, CytoReason, JAN 7, 2019, View Source [SID1234619714]).

Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo!
Discover why more than 1,500 members use 1stOncology™ to excel in:

Early/Late Stage Pipeline Development - Target Scouting - Clinical Biomarkers - Indication Selection & Expansion - BD&L Contacts - Conference Reports - Combinatorial Drug Settings - Companion Diagnostics - Drug Repositioning - First-in-class Analysis - Competitive Analysis - Deals & Licensing

Schedule Your 30 min Free Demo!

CytoReason will receive from Pfizer payments potentially equaling up to low double digit millions of US$ for technology access fees, research support and certain success-based payments.

CytoReason’s proprietary platform helps rebuild lost cellular information from gene expression data and associates genes to specific cells. This information is then integrated with additional omics and literature data to create a cell-based model of the trial-specific immune response. Integration with the CytoReason disease model empowers the study analytics and allows the model to learn and improve, leading to robust target discovery, drug response biomarkers and indication selection.

"We believe that CytoReason’s platform has the potential to offer valuable insights that may be applied to our research into the human immune system," said Michael Vincent, Chief Scientific Officer, Inflammation & Immunology, Pfizer. "Leveraging technologies such as this can help us understand disease and prioritize targets, and support our mission of bringing innovative new therapies to patients who need them."

"The collaboration with Pfizer will further strengthen our models in our core therapeutic areas. This will be our fifth major partnership, which we believe will help make our model unparalleled in its accuracy for assets across the pipeline," said David Harel, CytoReason’s CEO. "CytoReason’s model brings together thousands of samples on a cell-protein-gene level, allowing for fast and accurate insights."

About CytoReason

Based on more than 10 years of research, CytoReason’s technology uses a proprietary data and machine learning model to reconstruct cellular information from bulk tissue, to train an immune-specific NLP engine, and to integrate multi-omics data. The company’s platform organizes and standardizes collaborators’ data (gene, protein, cell, and microbiome) and integrates it into CytoReason’s proprietary disease model to generate mechanistic understanding of the immune system, leading to novel insights.

CytoReason’s technology has yielded 2 pending patents, 10 commercial and scientific collaborations and 16 peer reviewed publications. Fully applicable to cancer immunotherapy, autoimmune, neurodegenerative and infectious disease research, CytoReason is at the cutting edge of society’s boldest attempts to improve health outcomes through better understanding of the immune system.

Adagene Announces Collaboration for Discovery of Novel CAR-T with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

On January 7, 2019 Adagene, Inc., an innovative antibody discovery and engineering company, reported a collaboration with Dr. Richard Childs, Chief of the Laboratory of Transplantation Immunotherapy at the National, Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to discover antibodies targeting a novel antigen expressed on the surface of tumor cells (Press release, US NIH, JAN 7, 2019, View Source [SID1234553809]). Dr. Childs’s laboratory will convert these antibodies into a CAR-T, as they work to develop a non-major histocompatibility complex (MHC) restricted immunotherapy approach to targeting an endogenous retrovirus with tumor-restricted expression.

"We are very pleased to be collaborating with such an expert in the field of clinical cancer biology," said Peter Luo, CEO of Adagene. "At Adagene, our goal is to translate innovation and scientific research into life-saving medications. It is incredibly rewarding to have the opportunity to leverage our proprietary Dynamic Precision Library to develop antibodies against a disease with such highly unmet medical need."

"Adagene has gone to great lengths to develop our leading antigen display technology," said Felix Du, Head of Technology Development at Adagene. "With our unique combination of antigen presentation technologies and having a very large, diverse and fully human antibody discovery library we were able to find the first antibodies targeting non-MHC restricted surface-expressed antigens against this class of challenging cancer targets."

Stelexis Therapeutics Closes $43 million Series A to Expand Novel Platform Focused on Cancer Interception

On January 7, 2019 Stelexis Therapeutics, LLC reported that it closed a $43 million Series A financing to expand its proprietary platform to discover and selectively target pre-cancerous stem cells (Press release, Stelexis Therapeutics, JAN 7, 2019, View Source [SID1234550413]). Deerfield established Stelexis in 2017 together with scientific founders, Ulrich Steidl, Evripidis Gavathiotis, Amit Verma, and Roman Perez-Soler of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Health, New York and Derrick Rossi of Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Patrick Doyle serves as the founding CEO, and Keren Paz is the CSO of Stelexis.

Stelexis’ proprietary drug discovery platform identifies the earliest definable pre-cancerous stem and progenitor cells that lead to the formation of human primary and recurrent tumors for therapeutic intervention and relapse prevention. Stelexis’ mission is to develop novel cancer drugs that selectively target these critical pre-cancerous events related to both hematopoietic and solid malignancies.

"The ability to identify, isolate, study and screen rare pre-cancerous stem cells, from within bulk tumors, is an enormous breakthrough that has the potential to change how cancer patients are treated," stated Dr. Steidl. "Our thesis is that targeting cancer at its very origin should not only be effective as first line therapy, but should also lead to long-lasting remission for patients," said Dr. Rossi, who, prior to co-founding Stelexis, has also co-founded numerous other successful biotechnology companies.

Utilizing Deerfield seed funding and operational support since 2017, Stelexis has established its labs in Albert Einstein College of Medicine facilities, hired key management and is poised to deliver clinical trial data that validate its platform using the proceeds of this Series A round.

"We are thrilled to announce the formation and funding of Stelexis, which has the platform technology to explore the role pre-cancer conditions play in cancer development and recurrence. The team has an outstanding track record and we look forward to a stream of transformative cancer medicines," stated Dr. Robert Jackson, director at Stelexis and partner at Deerfield Management.

"Deerfield’s holistic approach to forming, funding and providing operational support to Stelexis has been instrumental in creating a leadership position in a novel targeted approach to treating cancer," said Patrick Doyle, CEO of Stelexis. "With these funds we are now positioned to execute on our potential to transform patients’ lives."

EXSCIENTIA RAISES US$26 MILLION IN SERIES B FINANCING ROUND TO ACCELERATE SCALING AS THE LEADING AI DRUG DISCOVERY COMPANY

On January 7, 2019 Exscientia the world-leading Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company reported it has raised US$26 million in a Series B financing round (Press release, Exscientia, JAN 7, 2019, View Source [SID1234539638]). This will be used to scale the company’s pipeline and advance selected programmes towards clinical development. The round included participation from new investors Celgene Corporation and specialist healthcare investor GT Healthcare Capital Partners, as well as existing investor Evotec AG.

Alan Au, Managing Partner of GT Healthcare Capital Partners, commented: "We are very excited to back Exscientia and partner with a world-class team to further extend its business, including in Asia. We have a shared vision to revolutionize traditional drug development processes and believe Exscientia’s unique capabilities have the potential to deliver well beyond cost-effectiveness and speed, to first-in-class and best-in-class drugs that benefit patients in the near future."

Dr Rupert Vessey, President of Research and Early Development at Celgene, said: "Exscientia has demonstrated that AI in molecular design is here today. With the global pharmaceutical industry acknowledging the importance of incorporating AI-driven R&D approaches into their drug discovery processes, we see a huge growth opportunity ahead. We believe Exscientia is set to become a global leader in AI-driven drug discovery and are excited to participate in this investment round."

Professor Andrew Hopkins, CEO and founder of Exscientia, said: "This Series B marks a milestone in our development and enables us to drive the next phase of strong business growth. Over the past 12 months we have substantially expanded our operations and capabilities to become a full stack AI drug discovery company. Furthermore, our unique Centaur Chemist platform allows us to move rapidly from idea generation to new drug molecules ready for IND and clinical development. With this new funding Exscientia is positioned to become the dominant player in AI drug discovery, driving radical change in R&D productivity. We are excited Celgene and GT Healthcare have joined with existing investor Evotec on this exciting journey."

The company has made considerable progress during 2018 and anticipates its first programmes driven by AI to be IND-ready within the next 12 months. The speed and capital efficiency demonstrated by Exscientia is already revolutionising the economics of small molecule discovery and in the future, this improved throughput will deliver benefits to patients.

Dr Werner Lanthaler, Chief Executive Officer of Evotec, said: "We continue to be very impressed with the progress Exscientia has made over the past year. Through our partnership with Exscientia we have seen first-hand evidence that they can deliver the most productive drug discovery engine in the industry. This latest funding will allow Exscientia to apply its platform at scale, taking advantage of the efficiencies that its AI-driven systems provide."

Exscientia will use the proceeds of this financing round to grow its "full stack" AI drug discovery capability to dramatically expand its pipeline, with a target of establishing an expansive portfolio of projects, both in-house and with partners by the end of 2019.

Alex Snow, Executive Chairman of Exscientia, said: "Exscientia has validated its technology by delivering multiple pre-clinical drug candidates with unprecedented efficiency. Exscientia’s platform has the potential to bring a generation of new medicines to the market by offering a technologically and financially superior approach to drug discovery that will benefit of patients. I am personally very excited to be part of Exscientia’s next stage of development, and to have the backing of such prestigious investors."

Exscientia were advised by Rothschild & Co on this transaction.

Integral Molecular Enters Immuno-Oncology Target Discovery Collaboration with Daiichi Sankyo

On January 7, 2019 Integral Molecular, the industry leader in membrane protein solutions, reported that it has entered into a collaboration to discover new therapeutic targets in immuno-oncology (I-O) with Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd. Integral Molecular will use its Membrane Proteome Array (MPA) platform to identify novel membrane proteins that regulate the human immune system’s ability to recognize and destroy cancer cells (Press release, Integral Molecular, JAN 7, 2019, https://www.integralmolecular.com/integral-molecular-enters-immuno-oncology-target-discovery-collaboration-with-daiichi-sankyo/ [SID1234533985]). Daiichi Sankyo will use the identified I-O targets to develop new therapeutics. Specific financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.

The MPA platform contains 5,300 different human membrane proteins, each individually expressed in live human cells. Each protein is screened for ligand binding and biological function using unfixed cells and flow cytometry, enabling high-sensitivity detection and high success rates. These features, particularly the ability to detect functional interactions in live cells, make the MPA ideally suited to the discovery of new therapeutic targets.

"By discovering new targets without preconceived biases, the MPA platform overcomes the disadvantages of current approaches for identifying novel immunomodulatory proteins," said Benjamin Doranz, President and CEO at Integral Molecular. "We have already discovered more than a dozen novel I-O interactions and confirmed that several of these interactions regulate T cells. We are looking forward to a successful collaboration with Daiichi Sankyo."